Light verb


In linguistics, a light verb is a verb that has little semantic content of its own and forms a predicate with some additional expression, which is usually a noun. Common verbs in English that can function as light verbs are do, give, have, make, and take. Other names for light verb include delexical verb, vector verb, explicator verb, thin verb, empty verb and semantically weak verb. While light verbs are similar to auxiliary verbs regarding their contribution of meaning to the clauses in which they appear, light verbs fail the diagnostics that identify auxiliary verbs and are therefore distinct from auxiliaries.
Light verb constructions challenge theories of compositionality because the words that form such constructions do not together qualify as constituents although the word combinations qualify as catenae.

Examples

Most light verb constructions in English include a noun and are sometimes called stretched verbs. Some light verb constructions also include a preposition, e.g.
The light verbs are underlined, and the words in bold together constitute the light verb constructions. Each of these constructions is the main predicate of the sentence. Note that the determiner a is usually NOT part of the light verb construction. We know that it is not part of the light verb construction because it is variable, e.g. I took a long/the first/two/the best nap. The light verb contributes little content to its sentence; the main meaning resides with the noun in bold.

Alternative constructions with full verbs

Many light verb constructions are closely similar in meaning to a corresponding full verb, e.g.
Alternative formulations such as these lead to the insight that light verb constructions are predicates just like the corresponding full verb alternatives. There can be, however, nuanced differences in meaning across these alternative formulations. The light verb constructions produce possibilities for modification that are less available with the corresponding full verb alternatives.

Contrasted with auxiliary verbs and full verbs

Many verbs that serve as light verbs can also serve as auxiliary verbs and/or full verbs depending on the context in which they appear. Light verbs are similar to auxiliary verbs insofar as they contribute mainly functional content to the clauses in which they appear. Light verbs, however, are not auxiliary verbs, nor are they full verbs. Light verbs differ from auxiliary verbs in English insofar as they do not pass the syntactic tests that identify auxiliary verbs. The following examples illustrate that light verbs fail the inversion and negation diagnostics that identify auxiliary verbs:
Light verbs differ from full verbs in that light verbs lack the semantic content that full verbs have. Full verbs are the core of a predicate, whereas light verbs form a predicate with another expression with full semantic content. This distinction is more difficult to illustrate, but it can be seen in the following examples involving reflexive pronouns:
The indices indicate coreference, i.e. the two coindexed words denote the same person. The reflexive pronoun must appear with the light verb, whereas the full verb allows the simple pronoun to appear as well. This distinction has to do with the extent of the predicate. The main predicate reaches down into the noun phrase when the light verb appears, whereas it excludes the noun phrase when the full verb is present.

Compositionality in terms of catenae

Light-verb constructions present the same difficulty associated with idiosyncratic expressions of every sort: the meaning is not compositional in a straightforward way. This fact is evident in the examples above, inasmuch as the words that constitute a light-verb construction often do not qualify as a constituent in any sense. These constructions do, however, form catenae. This fact is illustrated with the following dependency grammar trees:
The words of each light-verb construction form a catena. In this regard, the words in green qualify as the main predicate of the clause each time. If an auxiliary verb is present, it is included in the main predicate because like the light verb, it contributes functional meaning only.

In other languages

Examples in other languages include the Yiddish geb in geb a helf ; the French faire in faire semblant ; the Hindi nikal paRA ; and the bǎ construction in Chinese. Light verbs are extremely common in modern Indo-Iranian languages, Japanese, Basque and other languages in which verb compounding is a primary mechanism for marking aspectual distinctions. Light verbs are also equivalent to inherent complement verbs in many Kwa languages, e.g. jo in jo foi "run", tu in tu fo "advise".

Australian Languages

A significant proportion of Australian Aboriginal languages have verbal systems involving light verbs. Many Australian inflecting-verb classes are closed classes and very few in membership. Thus, in order to express more intricate assertions, matrix verbs are combined with coverbal elements such as preverbs to form complex verbal predicates. In such instances, the matrix verb typically still bears all of the tense–aspect–mood inflection but contributes little to the sentence semantically ; as noted above, however, they are still distinct from traditional auxiliary verbs.

Bardi

One such Australian language with prevalent uses of light verbs is Bardi, a Nyulnyulan language spoken in the north of Australia. Although its inflecting-verb class is comparatively large with respect to some other Australian languages, a number of these appear often as light verbs. Comprising the most frequent of these light verbs are the verb roots -ju- 'do/say' and -ma- 'put.' En example of the latter in use is:
In a case such as the above, liyan 'heart' is the preverb containing most of the semantic content. Likewise with goo 'hit' in the following example:

Jingulu

Typically, in languages with coverb+light-verb predicates, these words must be directly adjacent; however, in extremely rare cases in languages such as Jingulu, there can be intervening elements between the semantically-rich preverb and the inflected matrix verb. See the following example where the subject ngaya appears between the preverb ambaya 'speak' and the inflected main verb nu 'do.'
This rare but significant phenomenon provides evidence that, even in more heavily agglutinating languages like Jingulu wherein the main verb may not be morphologically independent from the preverb, these are in fact light verbs and not inflectional affixes.

Diachronic considerations

Light verbs are interesting to linguists from a variety of perspectives, including those of diachronic linguistics and computational linguistics. From the diachronic perspective, the light verb is said to have evolved from the "heavy" verb through semantic bleaching, a process in which the verb loses some or all of its original semantics. In this sense, the light verb is often viewed as part of a cline:
However, the light verb → auxiliary path is disputed, since a) light verbs can remain stable for very long periods since both light verbs and auxiliaries can exist in the same languages, descended from the same full lexical verb, but with different meanings.
In computational linguistics, a serious challenge is that of identifying light verb constructions, which require marking light verbs.